the racist non-apology

NY Post issues qualified apology for its chimp cartoon.

Yesterday, the New York Post published a cartoon by Sean Delonas showing two police officers shooting a chimpanzee and saying, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Many people immediately questioned whether the chimp was meant to be President Obama. Hundreds of people protested outside the offices of the Rupert-Murdoch owned NY Post today, calling for the paper to be shut down. This evening, the Post put up an editorial apologizing to some people who were “offended by the image.” At the same time, however, editors said they were disgusted by “opportunists seek to make it something else“:

It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

Period.

But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Update - Wayne A. Schneider over at The Zoo has more on why this isn't really an apology.

(Think Progress)
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There is absolutely no way in hell that anyone couldn't see the racism involved in this. The stimulus is synonymous with Obama. The racism of the imagery combined with the violence involved is completely offensive. This is just boggling...

Sure, it would be different if the stimulus was just another anonymous congressional bill that no one knew where it originated, but this is Obama's plan - there's no other way to look at it.